


Fallout

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Trauma, Episode Tag, Episode: s10e11 There's No Place Like Home, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 00:41:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3270320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Broken, broken, broken. </p><p>He was broken. None of his pieces fit. He was just a big bag of shrapnel that Sam had scrounged and tried to smelt back together into something that resembled human, but he wasn’t that. Not anymore. He was a monster, pure and simple.</p><p> </p><p>  <em>Dean holds it together...until he doesn't.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Fallout

**Author's Note:**

> This episode was definitely less disappointing than the last, but I'm still not getting anywhere near my fill of brotherly affection and concern, so here's my fix to a scene I think this episode needed.

Broken, broken, broken. 

He was broken. None of his pieces fit. He was just a big bag of shrapnel that Sam had scrounged and tried to smelt back together into something that resembled human, but he wasn’t that. Not anymore. He was a monster, pure and simple.

Dean’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror. Sam’s flicked up to meet them, all soft and begging, and full of none of the accusation that they should be, but he also didn’t miss how his arm tightened around Charlie who was still shaking and sobbing, huddled into his side in the corner of the backseat. He was protecting her, protecting her from the monster who had nearly beat her bloody. Hell! _Had_ beat her bloody and only stopped short of killing her because Sam had stopped him. 

He tore his eyes away from the mirror, focused on the dark ribbon of road. They needed to get Charlie to a hospital. She needed to be taken care of—properly. He and Sam could handle gashes, gouges, slashes, dislocated joints, and even some gunshot wounds, but broken bones that needed to be functional again were something a little beyond them unless it was just a nose or finger; and Dean had broken her forearm clean, felt the bones snap like twigs under the force he put on them; a force that radiated up in his gut from someplace that he and Sam both had tried to stopper up but was leaking out faster and faster as the days went by and the Mark whispered to him and made his blood boil and belly clench and burn with a yearning for blood that could not be sated. 

“Fuck….” 

“Dean?” 

Sam’s voice was whisper soft and worried. Not worried for Charlie. Worried for his brother.

Dean kept his eyes on the road, focused on the streetlights that were heralding civilization up ahead. “Nothin’, Sam. Nothin’.”

——

The small town hospital ER consisted of one doctor on call from the house across the street and three night nurses. It was blessedly quiet and they didn’t ask too many questions when Sam pulled his big puppy dog eyes and explained that Charlie was his next door neighbor, and he’d heard her shout for help and found her like this on her porch. They cooed over Charlie and shushed her and took her away to a room to stitch her up and set her arm and salve her wounds—the ones that they could reach anyway. 

The second they were out of sight, Sam was by Dean’s side, hovering, afraid to touch that he might ignite the fuse that was fizzing and popping beneath the surface, spluttering and threatening mass destruction.

Dean was sitting in the darkest corner of the tiny waiting area, hiding his own bruises and lacerations from the desk nurse, staring at the knuckles of his right hand, flexing them, watching the ripped skin that had clotted and started to scab tear back open and ooze blood. 

Sam pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and reached for Dean’s hand, wiped gently between the knuckles, just enough to catch the fresh blood and then wrapped it tightly and tucked in the corners.

“We’ll get you cleaned up, Dean. We’ll get you home and get you cleaned up.” 

Sam’s tone was urgent, pleading. Underneath the words he said, Dean could hear the panicked litany, _Please hold on, Dean. Please. Don’t break yet. I can fix this. I can make it better. Just let me get you safe._

But Dean wondered if Sam really believed it, because _he_ didn’t. It wasn’t that he doubted Sam’s ability, but he was becoming more and more certain that he was beyond saving. Like he’d told Cole, he knew how his story ended. His greatest fear wasn’t that he was right and the end came at the point of a knife or down the barrel of a gun, it was that Sam would be behind that knife or that gun because he would be the only one who could stop the monster’s waking. 

Dean flattened his hand in the air and watched it shake, watched Sam’s long slender fingers wrap tight around it and draw it in until he had it pressed against his cheek and the feel of Sam’s stubbled skin under his palm forced Dean to feel something more than the ugly guilt clawing at his soft underbelly like a feral, trapped cat fighting for freedom; it forced his eyes up to meet Sam’s and all he saw there was pleading and forgiveness. 

_How can you forgive this, Sam? How can I?_

“I got you, Dean,” Sam said. “I’ve got you. Just…wait.”

 _Wait. Wait for what? Wait to turn into a raving, homicidal lunatic?_ Dean stared steadily at his brother. _Too, late, Sammy. Too damn late. Already done that. Already crossed that line and then pushed even further, only this time is was someone we loved who paid the price, Sammy. If you hadn’t been there to stop me…._

Dean veered sharply away from the thoughts, felt Sam’s hand tighten on his, tugging him back to the present, rooting him in this moment so he could hold whatever was left of himself together until they were back at the bunker and Charlie was tucked in safe and sound and sleeping away her pain behind a locked door to which they both knew only Sam would have the key.

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, Sam. Yeah.”

——

Sam carried a soundly sleeping Charlie into the bunker and installed her in one of the unused rooms down an adjacent hallway to their own. She would be within hearing distance of Sam’s sensitive ears but safely out of sight of Dean.

Dean loitered in the garage, half a thought of just taking off back out into the grey dawn skipping around in his brain. It would be best that way. He was breaking down. Fast. Soon, there would be no holding him together, no holding him back, even Sam would fail—very nearly had in retrieving him from the demon’s clutches in the first place—and if he was still here for that, there was no telling what kind of damage he would do. He had nearly killed his brother the last time. He had a feeling all the repressed rage would only serve to fire the demon within anew, and if he tried again, he would succeed this time.

“Dean!” Sam sailed around the door, clutching the frame, flinching as the motion pulled on his still tender shoulder. “Dean, don’t. Please, don’t.”

Dean looked up into Sam’s terrified eyes and realized that the Impala’s door was open, he already had a foot inside, his body caught and frozen in the act of sinking into the driver’s seat. He pulled back, fingers clenching around the top of the door, keys cutting into his hand where he had them fisted tight. He unfurled his fingers and stared at his hand. It was shaking. He dropped the keys into the seat and pressed a palm over the Mark through his coat sleeve. It burned. It wanted him to run. It wanted him to go out and find the dark and live in the shadows and feed it blood.

He shuddered, gut clenching so hard he doubled over.

“Dean!” Sam grabbed him, held him up, pulled him close. “Dean, stay with me. Stay with me. I’m gonna take care of you. I promise. Just stay with me.”

Dean nodded against his little brother’s broad chest where his head was pressed and held, cradled with the greatest of care. He let Sam heft his weight, loop an arm around his waist and guide him back to his room. He sank onto his bed at Sam’s gentle urging, went limp for his brother so he could pull off his coat and his shirt and get a better look at what damage Dark Charlie had inflicted under the layers of fabric. 

“Sam….” 

Dean tried to push away Sam’s hands. He didn’t deserve to be touched with this kind of tenderness. He didn’t deserve to be clean. He wasn’t clean. He was soaked in blood: his own, the monsters he’d killed, the men he’d slaughtered—yes, slaughtered—there was no getting around that word anymore. He’d gone beyond killing. He was slaughtering. Murdering. Soaking himself in blood to feed the damn brand on his arm. 

Sam had said that maybe part of the force that would keep the Mark in check was Dean himself, but if that was true then this whole thing was for not because he was sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he did not possess the kind of fortitude it would take to exert that kind of control over the mark. He was weak and getting weaker.

Once his shirts were shed and Sam had turned on the bedside lamp and tilted the shade so that he could see better, his little brother knelt down between Dean’s splayed knees and put his hands against Dean’s bruised flesh and the look that crossed his face was so close to agony Dean was almost sure Sam was feeling every blow Dark Charlie had dealt as if she had struck him instead. His hands skated across Dean’s chest, up over his shoulders. He leaned close so he could examine his back, get a good look at the purple and green stains spreading over most of his torso, then came back forward, pressing softly against his belly where a large purpley splotch was spreading under his ribs on the left side. Sam’s hand traced it downward to the waistband of Dean’s jeans where it disappeared. He flicked open the snap with his thumb, deftly jerked down the zipper and folded back the denim so he could see where the bruise reached down the front of Dean’s hip. He pressed the flat of his hand against it, curved his fingers back around Dean’s bare hipbone, dipped his head and set his lips to the inflamed skin.

Dean groaned, covered his face with his hands and toppled backward on the bed. Sam inched forward between his knees, lifted up and draped himself across Dean’s body, laying out over his belly and resting his cheek against his sternum, feeling Dean breathe in and out until the rhythm got lost as the breaths turned quick and desperate and jerky and Dean’s stomach muscles tightened until he was rolling away from Sam and pulling his knees up and in and holding himself and sobbing.

Sam crawled up on the bed behind him, curving himself perfectly around his brother’s back and wrapping his infinite arm span around Dean’s shoulders and pulling him in tight, pressing his mouth to Dean’s shoulder, and humming something nameless and soft under his breath.

“I nearly killed her, Sammy,” Dean gasped, voice a ruined ghost of its usual graveled depth. “I nearly killed Charlie.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I _would_ have,” he insisted. “If you hadn’t come out just then, if you hadn’t yelled at me, you would have been holding a corpse. I was close, Sammy…so close.”

“But you didn’t,” Sam said again quietly, still humming. 

Dean curled tighter into himself. He gripped Sam’s arm, pulled it into his chest, tucking his hand up under his chin so that he could press his lips to Sam’s  knuckles. He took a deep, shivery breath. 

“Sam, you asked me once—asked me to kill you. If you got out of hand, you said, if you turned…dark.” He felt Sam tense behind him, his muscles leaping in apprehension all along Dean’s back where they were pressed together. “I’ve gone dark, Sam. So dark.”

“Dean—.”

“No. No, Sam. I’ve gone as dark as you can go. Please…promise me. Don’t let me become…this.”

Sam dropped his forehead to the boney vertebra at the top of Dean’s spine, rocked it there, back and forth, and Dean could feel the hot, choked little breathes puffing against his bare skin before the warm wet of tears sealed Sam’s cheek to his shoulder so that there was no more space between them. It wasn’t possible for them to get any closer.

“No, Dean. I won’t. You didn’t. You never believed for a second that you couldn’t bring me back, and I don’t believe it now.” He inched even closer, tucking his knees up tight behind Dean’s. “You saved me. Even when I didn’t want to be saved, you were dragging me back, shoving me forward. I’m not letting you go, Dean. Never, ever letting you go.”

Dean let out a long, slow breath and sank into the mattress and Sam and let the tears come because there was nothing more he could do. Sam had saved him. Sam had brought him back to this, handed him his humanity and told him to fight; fight like the devil and against him for the prize of his soul; and for the first time since this whole dark journey had begun ten years ago with their father’s foreboding warning he understood why Sam had been ready to die, why he had wanted to die. 

_Because it’s so damn hard to live, Sammy…and I just don’t know if I can do it._

Dean clutched his brother close and slept and dreamed of fire and blood, of darkness and shadow; and the Mark burned on his skin and burned in his dreams and taunted and begged; but Dean could feel a weight on his back, holding him tight, buoying him up, a weight like wings buffeting back the dark and giving him just enough room to breathe, to keep living, to keep fighting. 

It wouldn’t last until he woke. 

He would wake up screaming and sweaty, drenched so that there was no way to tell what was tears and what wasn’t. Sam would pull him back, wipe his face, tend his wounds, wrap himself around his big brother again and coax him back to sleep, and Dean would let him, because this was the painful part; this was the part where he gave all of himself that there was to give, every last piece and all the bits and dust from those that were already ground down beyond recognition—all of it. He gave it because it was what Sam wanted and because Charlie deserved to have a shot at him for all he’d done to her even though she’d never take it; and because he was a Winchester…. He may bleed and he may break, but a Winchester fought until he died. And him and Sam? 

Well, for them, death was no obstacle, so it was just fight…and keep on fighting.


End file.
